Beautiful Liars

June 23, 2008
In the air-kiss light latest from Adams (Ex-Girlfriends
), the launch of New York daily TV talk show The Beehive
sets its two female hosts—50-year-old veteran Sutton Lancaster and vibrant young Emma Ronson—on a collision course. A snide gossip column pinpoints their on- and off-set hostility, along with the missteps of their fellow regulars: Simone Williams, a black former model with maxed-out credit cards and a stalker problem, and witty, gay trust-fund baby Finn Robards, who's got the hots for straight pal Dean Paul Lockhart, for whom Emma, too, nurses an unrequited passion. (For now, Emma's sleeping with Sutton's aging ex-boyfriend.) Soon Sutton takes up with a gold-digging bartender half her age, while shopaholic Simone stoops to an in-person appearance at Target in a futile attempt to stave off her creditors. The stew of romantic and financial cross-purposes bubbles along merrily, spiced by the producers' fixation on ever-changing approval numbers and up-to-the-minute pop culture references. Although the characters' obsessions stretch thin toward the end, and their transformations occur too abruptly to be truly satisfying, there's little to spoil the deliciously bitchy fun.

May 27, 2019
Ashdown (Little Sister) burnishes her reputation with this intricately plotted psychological thriller set in London. In January 2000, 17-year-old Juliet Sherman went missing after walking home from a girls’ night out. The last person known to have seen Juliet was her friend Martha Benn. That same evening, Juliet was also with another friend, Olivia Heathcote. Eighteen years later, Martha, now a TV producer, is looking to jump-start her waning career with a new true crime series. She chooses Juliet’s disappearance as the anchor story in an effort not just to solve the crime but to relieve her guilt over what happened that night. Her first step is to reconnect with Olivia, but unbeknownst to Martha, Casey, a deranged fan of Martha, intercepts a letter meant for Olivia. Pretending to be Olivia, Casey inserts herself into the investigation, thus beginning a deadly game of cat and mouse. Oddly, Casey has intimate details about the crime and David Crown, the only major suspect and Juliet’s suspected lover. The alternating narratives of Martha and Casey add depth to this twisty tale. Ashdown keeps the reader guessing throughout. Agent: Kate Shaw, Viney Agency (U.K.).

May 1, 2019
True-crime television host Martha decides it's finally time to investigate the disappearance of her best friend, Juliet. Nearly 20 years ago, when the girls were teenagers, Juliet went missing in London, and the investigation ended as a cold case. Armed with some clues related to a father figure whom all the girls admired, Martha reaches out to Liv, their other best friend from those days, to see what Liv might remember from that night. But she ends up in touch with the wrong person?her letter is delivered to Casey, a very disturbed woman who is eager to "help" solve the case. But there is something much more sinister going on in her head. Chapters alternate between Martha and Casey, and the reader is taken on a twisty ride through the past and present as Martha tries to get closer to the truth by uncovering lie after lie, and secret after secret. There's a lot to unpack here, and readers who enjoy thrillers from Jo Bannister and Fiona Barton will find themselves intrigued.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)